San Diego County, San Diego Rat Control Situation:
Hi David, Is a UV blacklight still useful, exterior-wise, if it rains after the rodents leave their urine stains? I am in the process of performing exterior maintenance to better exclude my roof rats. 1) I have a 25 year old cedar shake roof in San Diego California with openings under each shake along the rake edge of the roof at the gable ends of my house. There's no drip edge, i.e. under the shakes I have roofing paper (now somewhat curled) that runs more or less up to and rests right atop the fascia board. Because I have skip sheathing, and since the cross section of a shake is a wedge that is up to one inch at the upper, thick end, this appears to create many huge entry points along the rake edges even though the sheathing is rabbeted into the fascia board. As a result, I'm thinking of getting a UV blacklight to use outside the house to sleuth for urine stains along the upper edge of the gable end shakes and fascia boards. My question is, how easily does the winter rain wash away the urine, rendering this a pointless exercise? 2) I noticed a new product called "rat-out gel" and was thinking of applying it along the rake edges mentioned above. Or, maybe I should just buy many rolls of X-Clude and use that instead. Or maybe both. Any comment? Thanks very much for your website, Doug
My response: First off, I do not have experience using UV lights to detect rat urine. But I do suspect that rain will severely limit the effectiveness of this approach. I have never heard of Rat-Out Gel or XClude, but I typically stick to physical barriers rather than repellent type devices. If your roof makes this impossible, you might have a tough time keeping the rats out.
San Diego Rat Control Tip of The Week
How To Deal With A Rat On The Roof
Also known as a homeowner's furry little nightmare, rats are a kind of household pest no one wants to have in their roof. These pests can keep you up at night with their scurrying sound, contaminate your environment with their feces and nesting materials, and spread all kinds of diseases.
Unlike having rats in other parts of your home, their presence in your roof can be quite difficult to deal with. The roof is a difficult place to reach and inspect. If you have to remove them from your roof, you will have to either hire a professional to help you or carry out a difficult process by yourself.
If you feel you can deal with the rats in your roof without the help of a wildlife removal agent, there are certain things you need to put in place before going ahead to remove them. First, you need to find a way to put away all the things attracting them into your home. The major things that attract rats are the availability of food and a hiding place. To make your home unattractive to them, you need to keep all the food in your home in a place that is inaccessible by the rats and keep your house clean. When you do this, they will find it difficult to stay in your home and will not find their way into your roof.
The best way to handle rats in the roof is to set multiple snap traps in the roof, bait them with attractive baits, and place them in different locations on the roof. These traps will help trap as many as possible humanely. If you are considering using poison to help kill the rats in your roof, you will be causing yourself more troubles. Having shared this, you need to use only snap traps when it comes to removing rats from your roof.